Although a great deal of effort has been devoted to providing security protection for transmissions between computer systems over networks, the computer systems themselves are still comparatively unprotected. The existing code in these systems may be in the form of user applications, BIOS routines, operating system routines, etc., which are vulnerable to corruption by viruses and other third party software. Such corruption, which is typically deliberate, may simply interfere with the normal operation of the system, may destroy files and other important data, and/or may be used to surreptitiously gain access to classified information. Various measures have been developed to reduce the threat of such harm, but most rely solely on security software in the form of detection software that searches for known viruses, validation software that validates the integrity of software modules before they are executed, and monitoring software that detects a limited number of abnormal events in the execution of software modules. To provide uniformity across many platforms, most security software is relatively independent of the hardware on which it is running and therefore cannot use hardware features to increase the level of protection. Thus, the level of protection may be completely dependent on the security software. However, the security software itself is subject to software attack, and thus provides only limited protection.